Conclusion

This thesis attempted to describe a complex system of pre-modern, modern and post-modern features of dedifferentiated cultural, economic, military and political relations of power in Afghanistan. Five enabling conditions for creation of a warlord democracy in the country were discerned: electoral-political, military, and economic conditions, the condition of a regime change by military intervention, and the condition of institution-limited state-building and democratization paradigms. The main emphasis was put on the emergence of militant entrepreneurship of Afghan warlords as (a) providers of the service of security and violence, and (b) economic providers of opium-generated income.

The emerging pattern of militarizing entrepreneurship develops in context of globalization and post-modernization. The process of globalization includes major dedifferentiation between economy, politics and militancy. The society, the state and the militants become commodified, while economy militarizes. The system of violence becomes disembedded from the society and embedded in the global economic system. Violence and profit blend, state and society are subjected to them, with pre-modern and modern values and motives for communal action subordinated to the goal of gain maximization.

The military and economic predominance of Afghan warlords nourished by global market forces enforces their position a degree that renders them virtually invincible for the instruments of the modern state and for modernist international models of post-conflict intervention. Warlords utilize state-building and democratization processes to legitimize their positions within the local and international political system, which leads to creation of a warlord democracy. I shall conclude with several observations:

                  (a) The global community does bear responsibility in the creation of the new wars in remote regions of the world. Transforming the tradition of proxy-wars from the Cold War period, powerful actors continue to cause instability and violence in remote areas of the world. Moreover, as the opening epigraph suggests, what is lasting security and prosperity for some, may be the lasting war and poverty for others.

                  (b) Strictly national interests by foreign intervening parties are rarely compatible with global interests or sensitive to the interests of intervened parties. Hence, foreign policies promoting national goals are likely to endanger the world communities. National interests enforced abroad may trigger commodification and militarization of target areas, as intended or unintended consequence, and may provide enabling conditions for fostering local warlordisation.

                  (c) International aid and engagement often focus on early elections without providing security and building local economies. Intervention programmes often initiate irreversible processes based on imperfect perception of the case-country and imperfect  set of strategies for approaching warlordism. Thus, state-building and democratization process, as well as international aid and state resources, may enable local actors to entrench themselves in local politics through domination of the local economy and security.

                  (d) Global licit/illicit economy is one of the key players in the local games of power and war. Illicit economy is not likely to be neutralized only through elimination of producers of illicit commodities, so long as the demand is high. The economic and the military factors are intertwined, and their interplay significantly shapes political outcomes.

                  (e) State-building and democratization programmes are more likely to succeed if built on local traditions of self-organization, which can be achieved by means of translating democratic terminology and institutions in local terms, and not vice versa. A form of democracy as expression of local culture and values can be fostered, open to indigenous notion of perfectability unrestricted by Western models.

                  (f) Finally, one of the key problems for scholars and decision-makers in post-conflict settings is the problem of knowledge. Carothers summarizes it precisely: the theoretical upgrades of the transitional paradigm consists mainly of recasting the problem of change in different terms, which in practice “has ended up being more a restatement of lack of knowledge about how change occurs than an answer to it,“ (Carothers 2004:138).

We attempt to make changes for better in worse-off societies without really knowing how change takes place. State-building and democratization theories and policies rise popular hopes and expectations in target countries to a level which is unlikely to be met. Local depoliticization and disbelief in democracy and in the international community follow. In the environment of post-modern wars, democratization is not likely to be more than formal exercises put into service of militant entrepreneurs until violence is de-commodified and economy is demilitarized.

Warlords as military entrepreneurs should be regarded as a product of a post-modern world, dependent not on the state but on the global market forces. Consequently, managing warlordship and war must involve coordinated international activities through the market. A “new” language should be devised to enable scholars and policymakers to understand and manage militant entrepreneurship. Political science and state-building strategies need post-modernization to deal with democratizing post-conflict societies.

Strategies for post-conflict interventions by the UN and other international agencies need to be re-modelled in accordance to the specific modes of operation of post-modern wars, with reference to their embeddedness in the global economic system. So long as state-building theories are caught within modern models, assumptions, expectations and strategies derived from them are likely to fail.  Furthermore, international aid, operations and organizations are likely to be commodified and misused in the local/global military entrepreneurship of the post-modern era. This we see in the case of Afghanistan at present, in many cases in Africa, Central Asia, South America and the Balkans, and we are likely to see it in the future, unless global economy and violence are tamed and embedded into service of the global community.

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